Pathways and Passages

Passage: "The action of going or moving onward, across, or past; movement from one lace or point to another, or over or through a space or medium; transit" (Oxford English Dictionary)

Genocide is crossed by pathways and passages. There are the pathways of the genocidal process, such as the historical and sociopolitical paths from which genocide emerges, the routes genocide takes once it has begun, and the post-conflict trajectories undertaken as individuals and societies seek a way forward in the aftermath. Such paths are mixed with passages, or processes of transformation, ranging from transformations of identities (e.g., perpetrators, victims, survivors, bystanders, witnesses, humanitarians, the “other,” and so forth) to those of sociopolitical states of being (e.g., authoritarianism, democratization, transitional justice, diaspora, and so forth).

During 2014, the CGHR UNESCO Chair focused on how such "Pathways and Passages" are linked to genocide prevention. Related initiatives included the "Framing Bigotry" film series, lectures, and an international expert meeting. In addition, CGHR hosted an internationational conference on "Genocide: Pathways and Passages" in April 2014. In the Fall of 2014, the Chair focused on pathways to/from perpetration, an issue that was the focus of a CGHR speaker series, a course, and CGHR Executive Committee Member Stephen Eric Bronner's new book, The Bigot (Yale, 2014).